Some of those towers in Asia would look cool in Austin imo, or would that clash too much with the existing skyline?

Depends on the tower. Some are revolutionary while still "classy" while others are totally off-the-charts weird and can't decide what they want to be.

The Bowen (left) and Domain Tower 2 (right)

https://i.imgur.com/MBss0yv.jpg?1

A couple of news worthy development items today. The Austin Business Journal is reporting that the large area of site prep across the highway from Tesla's U/C Giga Texas site is for a SpaceX facility. Also, a permit was filed for a 62-story residential and hotel tower

Another 700'-800' tower. WOW! This marks, I believe, 10 towers either proposed, working through entitlements or U/C over 600'!!!

Yup. I have 10 on my list if 5th & Colorado is counted. An amazing 8 of the 10 are 700'+. Then we have two more coming in just under 600' at 594' - U/C Google #2 and the Travis.

I keep forgetting about the Google tower. That's such a transformational buliding for the skyline.

Here's a recent photo of it taken by an Austin forum member:

https://i.imgur.com/iuH3jbt.png

Oh wow! That's much further along than I thought.

Wow indeed! It's like the towers never stop coming. Quick question: in your opinion is Austin becoming a true urban environment in the south/southwest or do you think it already is?

It's up to around 400 feet now. The building in the photo to the left of it is 397 feet.

I'm not sure, but I do think Austin has a unique way of looking inward about a multitude of things. One of them has been the way that our downtown has always been the place for fun in Austin. We're not a city with amusement parks or water parks or even a typical city zoo, so our downtown and the parks surrounding it have always been our playground. Being that so many people were already using those places and with the density naturally happening there, I do think Austin is unique in Texas for much of its density being close in.

Kinda. Sorta. I think we need much more walkable density in our close in neighborhoods to be considered truly urban. We are still remarkably suburban in character within a mile or two of Downtown.

Please specifically define "walkable density" in your terms.

The capitol is one mile from Lady Bird Lake. UT extends at least another 2 miles north of there. Austin is not New York or Chicago...but, it's [I]urban core[/u] is pretty darn dense (and walkable) for a city of almost 2.4 million people!

Walkable density means having enough homes close together that they can support the basic amenities of daily life within a 15 minute walk. And sidewalks! Many of our neighborhood streets don't even have sidewalks!

For the purposes of my description, I'm including UT, Capitol Campus and West Campus as 'greater Downtown area' because they are not regular 'neighborhoods'. Using the Urban Transect nomenclature, they are SD (Special District) or T6 (like Downtown).

What we need are T5 and T4 neighborhoods throughout the urban core, let alone within 1 or 2 miles of the 'greater Downtown area'. For example, Plaza Saltillo is T5, but a block away is T3. Clarksville is maybe T4 in spots, but mostly T3 and Tarrytown is absolutely T3 except along Enfield and parts of Exposition. Heritage, North University, Hyde Park, mostly T3 with pockets of T4.

We are beginning to build T5 along our corridors, but the development is mostly spotty, and not very pleasant for walking for the most part. If the corridors were more continuous, and we had T4 for at least 1/4 mile from the corridors, they would be more urban.

What we need throughout the core is more development like Saltillo, Mueller, Triangle, the Grove and the Domain. Most of those are examples of the kind of T5 we need along corridors and special opportunity area like around transit stations, and the missing middle residential areas in Mueller are a good example of the kind of T4 we should have near the corridors, throughout the traditional 'neighborhoods'.

https://www.cnu.org/publicsquare/tra...gram-diversity

I don't disagree with you. Dense development is beginning to spread throughout the core - as you have highlighted. However, as a former lobbyist for developers, good luck in trying to convince those living in Tarrytown, Clarksville, West Lynn, North University, Hyde Park, etc., etc., etc. to densify. I already would classify most of those neighborhoods as upper T3/lower T4 (small lot SFRs). I'd even go as far as classifying most masterplanned communities as the same (at least an upper T3/lower T4) - even though they may be distant from the core of Austin.

Austin will never become as walkable as I expect you want throughout its "core." For that to occur, you'll need wide/vast swaths of T5 and T6 areas. The infrastructure is just not there for that to happen. But, I like what is happening along major corridors. It, at least, is moving in a positive direction - and a bit of an easier sell to the neighborhoods.

Sidewalks and density aren't everything when it comes to a walkable neighborhood. It's not just about how easy your walk will be as far as if you have a space to do it in. You also have to have the sort of amenities that you want and need close by, otherwise, you'll still have to travel farther for what you want. And also, even if you live in a dense walkable neighborhood, you're still at the mercy of the market and companies that you rely on closing their stores and moving around or not being there at all. I learned that recently this past year after my most favorite HEB in the world (and the smallest one in Austin) closed after they opened a new big fancy one considerably farther away than I would ever care to ride my bike to.

Sidewalks are good, but here's the thing. The first house I grew up in had sidewalks, however, the street it was on was a 4 lane divided street (South First Street) in South Austin where people drove fast and still do. Some of the craziest things I've seen on Austin streets have happened on South First, and I wouldn't ride a bike in the street there even today. Now, I clearly remember walking to the grocery store when we lived there as it was right down the street at South First & William Cannon, though, I'm not 100% sure if they had sidewalks then.

The 2nd house I grew up in had no sidewalks, and still doesn't, but it's far more walkable safety wise than the one on South First was, and even though it's a little farther away from the that same grocery store, the walk isn't prohibitively far, and the bike ride was even better. That is, until HEB closed that store last year. I still ride my bike to two other stores, but the ride is 2 1/2 to 3 times as far to both. Still, we have other options that are totally doable even within walking distance. I feel like commercial density is more important than housing density if your goal is the convenience of accessing it. That means having dense commercial retail close to neighborhoods, even if the housing stock isn't as dense.

But that is just the thing. You don't get commercial density without the residential density to support it. Anybody involved in commercial development counts 'rooftops' nearby as the principle measure of the viability of a market. Del Valle has been crying for an HEB for decades, but there just isn't the density. They may eventually get their chance with Velocity Crossing, but HEB hasn't committed on when they will develop that store. That is probably why your HEB closed. Newer, larger stores are closer to more rooftops.

The same principle applies Downtown and along our busiest corridors. The Lamar Union development is great in many respects, but has struggled. It took out some viable, if low rent commercial, and added back a significant amount of residential and commercial. It has had a lot of great restaurants and retail, but there also has been a lot of turnover, despite having Alamo Drafthouse as an anchor, and a free parking garage. The added residential just isn't enough to sustain the businesses. If there were more homes throughout Zilker within easy walking distance, the commercial spaces would do better.

In truly urban, dense, walkable cities, the commercial corridors primarily serve the adjacent neighborhoods within walking distance and become neighborhood institutions. They are not primarily geared to attracting people throughout the city who have to drive (take transit or ride) to get there. That is the suburban auto-centric model that Austin and a good deal of the US is developed on.

I live in South Austin, so it's not like there's a lack of rooftops here, and there's a new 5-story apartment complex going up two blocks south of that old HEB site that will have 307 units. That store was already surrounded on all sides by neighborhoods. The irony is that where that new big HEB is going up at Congress & Slaughter, has considerably less housing stock and less dense options. It also didn't make sense to have HEB there, as it wasn't really needed since there's a Walmart and Target in the shopping center across the street. And I don't even like that store since it's laid out funky. It's laid out more like a Walmart or Target than an HEB is, which makes me think they were just trying to compete with those two.

That's what I'm talking about though. That HEB at South First & William Cannon served this neighborhood, and now in its absence, we don't have a full service grocer. I mean, actually, there's a Fiesta up at Stassney and I-35, but we've never really shopped there consistently. And again, ironically, that Fiesta replaced another Fiesta that was in the same space that the old HEB was in. HEB said the reason they left that space was that they couldn't expand since they didn't own the building, and it needed infrastructure upgrades that the owners weren't willing to do. And now, unless I'm willing to take a 20 to 25 minute bike ride - something I'm fully capable of doing, we're otherwise forced to drive farther to HEB. That little HEB was an 8 minute bike ride, versus the other two which are 20 and 25 minute rides. And that's without counting the new HEB which I'll never ride to since I don't care to and it's prohibitively far, and a difficult and dangerous ride. This doesn't have anything to do with density since that HEB had been at that location for 20 years. They chose to leave an area that has been developed since the 60s. And now the people living here are forced to drive to another store farther away. Thankfully, I can do the ride, but not everyone in my neighborhood can.

I just don't buy into the idea that more density would legitimize having a store nearby since nothing stopped that from being true for the past 35 years for us as we had two stores within walking distance, and now we have 0. And South Park Meadows is a lot of things, but it's not more dense than my neighborhood. And I don't envy the people who have to deal with the traffic down there every day. I should know, my brother lives off Slaughter, and it takes them forever to go anywhere, and a bike ride to the grocery store in their neighborhood is out of the question. In the 7 or 8 years they've lived there, they've seen several fatal wrecks on Slaughter, and that's when the traffic was moving fast enough to be lethal.

I feel like those apartments up and down Lamar are great and all for density, but I don't think the type of retail they're getting is anything special or particularly needed. That's why they have such a high turnover. The first thing I would look at before moving into a neighborhood is the type of businesses in it that I would be using most often, grocery stores being chief among them. If a place is lacking that, I'd have to look somewhere else.

Kevin, I should not have included comments on your specific neighborhood, because I do not know it like you do. However, I do know that your neighborhood is anything but walkable urban. Grocery stores (at least the large supermarkets we are most familiar with) are also not great examples of the kind of neighborhood serving retail found in walkable urban areas, as they are built on the auto-oriented suburban model. When I lived in larger, walkable urban cities, I often bought my groceries from tiny (a few thousand square feet) neighborhood green grocers that packed in just about anything you can get at HEB, with similar quality. There might have been fewer brand names of the same staple product, smaller quantities, and the varieties might have skewed differently depending on the specific ethnic enclave they were located in, but I did not suffer from access to quality food at a reasonable price.

Anyway, the original question that prompted this off topic thread had nothing to do with groceries. The question was "is Austin becoming a true urban environment in the south/southwest or do you think it already is?" and my answer is still: not yet. Maybe in another 20 years or so, with the build out of Project Connect and further development of our corridors, but we also need Land Development Code reform that will allow a variety of denser, walkable missing middle housing throughout our core neighborhoods to be able to claim a truly urban environment.

X-posting a post by IluvATX in the Austin subforum. Three residential towers needing a zoning change for height all near each other in the Rainey St. District got City Council approval on their final reading this afternoon.

In addition to the above three towers that just got approved, there are three more Rainey St. District residential/hotel towers either approved or going through the permitting process that are ~600, 800+ & 1,000+ feet.

Hyatt Centric Congress Ave

https://i.imgur.com/ET46amih.jpg

https://i.imgur.com/H9uJOhxh.jpg

Hanover Brazos St

https://i.imgur.com/oduv3pdh.jpg

Whole Foods HQ Expansion

https://i.imgur.com/xzCrT89h.jpg

“What pandemic ?” — Austin —

Austin's growth is crazy. Although we're primarily urban focused on this site, what are the Austin suburbs doing lately? Still growing fast? I'm trying to imagine Austin in 10 years- are we looking at a larger metropolitan area with similar growth patterns to all other Texas cities (Houston, Dallas) or will Austin stay more compact than that former two?

To say the suburbs are growing fast would be a severe understatement. Housing market is absolutely nuts and construction companies can't keep up with the demand for businesses and houses alike.

I agree. Growth in Austin is crazy! My cousins their talk about it all the time.

Some 200+ people a day are moving to the metro area. I believe - as of last month - there was only 12 days of housing inventory available (the fewest of any major metro in the country). A large number of sales are not even hitting the "market." Developers cannot build fast enough.

As for Austin's future - I hope it grows to be more dense than Dallas or Houston. Just based on the last 10 years of growth - Austin's metro could have 3.1 million by 2030 (5+ million by 2045). I would hope that a good chunk of those will live near the center and not in the periphery.

With rail coming and more "walkable" core neighborhoods, Austin could get a better handle on traffic. It's not going to disappear. But, allowing citizens to live closer to work and play areas, it could remove them from a long commute - clogging the freeways. Additionally, with more housing options near the center, it could have a positive affect on pricing. Even though those homes will still be pricey, having more options could slow down some of the price growth. In some cases, offers are coming in at $100k-$250k over asking price on $500k-$750k homes. Recently, a family purchased a home near Riverplace for $28 million. Ten days after they closed, they received an unsolicited offer for 10% more than they paid (they turned it down). Another home sold about a month ago in West Lake Hills (on Lake Austin) for $39 million. And those two examples are for properties of less than 9 acres! Just crazy.

Edit: An additional property - Medway Ranch (~67 acres) - sold early last year for ~$30 million (on Lake Austin off of Pecan Road)...

Yes! Despite headwinds from strong Housing Opposition Groups/NIMBYs. The goal to protect central city single family homes from change still overrides much of our community goals at great expense. Perhaps this changes, it's just a matter of time, how much pain they put on all of us beforehand though the jury is still out

Crazy growth. Can’t build fast enough. Cash offers for 10% over asking.

In regard to density Austin will be denser simply due to the demand for downtown living. Many more residential towers in downtown. The underlying dynamics are different here. You have a lake and parks and soco all in the center. Then u have terrible highway traffic infrastructure that limits mobility. Then u have Nimbys limiting development outside downtown. It creates an island effect like Honolulu or SF. At least for downtown.

The burbs are exploding like Dallas / Houston.

Austin's pipeline of towers has been pretty large for a long time, but after a Pandemic pause, we're finally starting to see some groundbreakings with a lot of other projects looking close to a groundgreaking.

Well above that in a myriad of cases!!!

I recently had a company offer me a job based in Austin but the crazy real estate situation made me turn it down. I probably would've done it a couple years ago. I also didn't want to live in some far-flung suburb.

what kind of company/offer?

Things seem totally out of control with real estate prices. A year ago I had a realtor do an analysis of my property, which is just a 1400 sq ft, 55 year old house in the city. At that time he estimated the market value at $525K. Last week he updated it to $675K, and one week later $722K. I think it's because of the bidding wars where people are offering cash just to get into a house, and at ridiculous prices. This is a comfortable, friendly neighborhood and not extravagant at all. Yet some of the larger homes, including on my street, are currently estimated to have a market value of $1.5-2.0M. My realtor friend said that there's very little inventory in the city, so people who can, will pay just about anything whenever a property comes on the market (often without there ever being a "for sale" sign). It's making a lot of us in the city rather wealthy on paper, but not in reality, because the property taxes and cost of living here are killing us. For me, the expenses of maintaining this old house are a huge burden. At some point, we'll be forced out like the minority community in East Austin was forced out. I can see myself being forced out in a year or two, and I honestly don't know what I'm going to do, because anywhere I would want to live is in the same situation.

People have been doubling and tripling up more and more here. The house next door to me went on the rental market, and three guys (professionals) moved in together and split the rent. So they ended up in a pretty nice house in a friendly neighborhood for an affordable rent for each of them. The thing is, you have to be tolerant of having housemates, and a lot of people are not.

I moved from the Bay area to Lakeway, an Austin suburb, 5 years ago. I paid $430k for my 3000sf home and just received a realtors appraisal for $800k. I turned them down.

It looks like site prep may have started Friday on the 52-story Travis residential tower. A couple of excavators started working the site Friday. View from the Quincy Tower construction webcam:

https://i.imgur.com/MRZf5mI.png
https://app.oxblue.com/open/endeavor/redrivertower

In regards to Aviationguys post, as a general point, I don't understand why the housing market seems like its not keeping up with the demand. Texas is a pro-business and not NIMBY place in general. I'm guessing some places in Austin are more NIMBY, but I don't understand how the market isn't meeting needs in the suburbs.

Shouldn't it be solid, house to house development from downtown Austin to Route 130 in the east? It seems strange that there isn't development moving eastward from downtown- seems that the sprawl is mainly occurring northward towards Georgetown or southwards towards San Marcos. Seems strangely lopsided especially since there is no geographic growth hinderance moving east from downtown.

I'm basing this off of Google Maps satellite images, which could be outdated. Either way I would have expected more development based upon what I'm hearing about Austin housing.

That would make sense and certainly would provide more affordable housing. Similar to how the somewhat affordable housing in the Denver metro is toward the less desirable eastern Plains. Maybe some of the Austin forumers can explain it? There a lot of companies and jobs going to Austin but if people can’t find or afford a place to live it will curtail that really quick. I mean I’m anecdotal evidence of that in that I turned down a good job offer due to the current real estate situation.

Austin’s land use code is from 1984… It is all about replacing greenfields and forests with auto-centric development, horrible at allowing for high-demand infill development (with a few exceptions). And that’s exactly the way our Housing Opposition Groups want to keep it. We were a few weeks away from replacing our antiquated code with a new one in early 2020 when a NIMBY-led lawsuit found a NIMBY-curious judge and threw the whole thing into the courts. HB 2989 could fix all of this but the HOGs have hired two lobbyists to kill it. We need more attention to stymie NIMBYism at every level of government as things only get worse from here.

Without Googling the exact number, a local TV station recently reported that some 40K+ homes and apartments were built during 2020. Apparently the population growth has accelerated. The census probably won't reflect it until the first annual estimate after the 2020 census is published. Elon Musk is also apparently worried about where his 10K Tesla and SpaceX factory workers will live.

Pretty much all the land along SH-130 has been in play for a decade or more since the tollroad was first being built. It takes a long time to entitle, service, and build though. The environmental constraints don't help. Much of the area is in floodplain and the soils are terrible heavy clay.

The fact that the toll road is very expensive to use to a lot of people, also slowed down development IMO.

That's the next great frontier, it's already booming in far Northeast austin near 45/130 and it will continue to fill in. It looks like North Dallas out there with the rolling hills and praire-ish landscape.

There's a large landfill in that no man's land of "central, east austin" inside the 130 loop along with large swaths of land set aside for the Colorado River and Walter Long Park . Then you have an airport and another landfill in
the southeast side of the metro that makes it less desirable. East austin has always been pretty rural/agricultural and "un-austinish" and growth mostly followed everywhere but east.

It took about a decade, but 130 is seeing a lot of growth now.

130 between Georgetown and Manor is where it's going to really fill in.

The limiting factor for buildout is raw materials and labor. Hence can’t build fast enough. There just isn’t enough lumber ans skilled labor to get the housing supply to keep up with demand and in-migration

^^I find the raw materials angle to be pretty hard to believe, but I can see the possibility of not having enough workers to actually construct the buildings.

Either way, interesting to see how this will play out. I worry a bit that Austin will fall on its own sword in this regard, seems like it should be used to the inflow at this point in it's growth history. It runs the risk of becoming too expensive to make sense as a non-coastal, landlocked city with nothing but space to grow.

There has been a world-wide shortage of materials dating back to 2017 (and the pandemic has only worsened the situation).

Also, Austin is not going to "fall on its own sword," at least not in the mid-term. Even though most Austinites are in awe of the increase in property values, it is still far lower than either coast (let alone the overall cost of living). Currently, the risk of a housing bubble is still quite low.

This is absolutely true. The Austin metro may have very well broken a record for raw population growth in a single year. My colleagues and analysts believe we grew by 70,000 - 75,000 in 2020. And, yes, you are correct, this will not be reflected in the forthcoming release of the 2020 Census. It should be reflected on the July 1, 2021 estimate released in spring 2022 (I believe).

The cookie cutter suburban areas are cheaper than the East Coast, but the places that people actually want to be are pretty outlandishly and artificially expensive IMO. I'm sure many East Coasters would agree.

I'm not trying to be rude or upset anyone when I say this, I just see this becoming a problem in the not-too-distant future. It could be a bubble on the horizon or some kind of slowdown due to the expense. I think Nashville is in a similar situation, although Nashville actually has more scarcity of land due to topography than Austin does and potentially justifies its high housing costs.

I don't see many young New Yorkers moving to Austin to live in a cookie cutter suburb, but precisely to the overly expensive areas that we're talking about. I know quite a few people, including one of my best friends who turned down a transfer to Austin due to its COL, and they currently live in New York. I've also worked out that living in Austin would cost more per month than it would in New York for me, mainly due to the necessity of having a car, something I don't have right now. Rents are actually not much cheaper out there for something nice.

In any case, I wish Austin the best and hope it can solve its housing issue.

Well sure, but the cookie cutter suburban areas are for people that want families and/or space at a relatively inexpensive price compared to the coasts.
Obviously tech has boomed, but so has every industry that comes with rapid population growth.

Desirable parts of Austin are outlandish to buy in as of 2021, but folks with money are still snatching them up. Austin, unlike DFW and Houston, does have some geographical constraint that coincides where most people would want to leave.

Austin isn't just a hip place to live in anymore, it's a place where people want to move to and put down roots. It has matured.

I think Austin does have a severe issue in the short term (1-3 years) but it just needs the bottlenecks to unclog. As you noticed earlier, it has lots of new infrastructure and open space in the eastern half.